To say that this past year has been a blur is an understatement. I honestly don’t know where it’s gone. I looked back at our project list from exactly 1 year ago, and ya know what? I don’t feel like we slacked off one bit. No Sir-E. We honestly got some crap accomplished.

Now that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a long way to go….

For the sake of patting our own proud, proud backs; and of course sharing our accomplishments with all of you kind folks: here’s some highlights from the Cavender Diary this past year…..

We painted every inch of the inside that wasn’t painted the first year. The office, the guest bedroom, the guest bath even got a coat of paint when I painted the inside of brown cabinets sparkling white and it made the rest of the room dingy…… So ceiling and walls got an unexpected coat of super-white ceiling paint.

Painted the outside of the house as well. We matched the garage to the house, and painted all the “Puke” Green a lovely, soothing chocolate brown. Never you mind that this project started in April, and was completed last week…….and by an outside contractor even……..Never you mind. It’s completed, It’s over……and we shall never speak of it again.

We covered the porch ceiling and posts in cedar. Love, Love, Love this detail. Did I mention that we LOVE this detail? Less “puke-green” on the outside of our house is a great thing.

We built a great little shelf in the master bedroom that inspired us to finish painting all the trim white. I have a plan for crown moulding in here…something a little unusual. Stay tuned for that.

Installing the sprinkler system in August was something we wanted from the very begining . So glad we didn’t do it by ourselves, we WISELY hired someone…SSSSSSSOooo glad that we did. Not sure that was something we would have wanted to tackle by ourselves in the Hot, Hot, Texas, August Sun. (I can feel all that heat just looking at this picture)

We made the perfect wreath for our newly painted juicy orange front door…this was so simple and cheap.

I’m so proud of our plumbing pipe firewood holder. I know that it is very trendy for the hipsters to use plumbing pipe to make household things now. I even have had walls of shelves made from pipes in my last house. But this project really cooks my chili. I just think it is so “Cool” and “Modern-Industrial”. I’m working on a console for the Living Room that is also made of pipes……just don’t want to start a “Plumbing Pipe Theme” around here.

Our favorite project by a LANDSLIDE..is the wood wall headboard we built in our master bedroom. We just wanted to mount our swing arm lamps on something more substantial than just the wall. This was a homerun all around. It just looks fantastic. We think it feels like we are sleeping in a posh boutique hotel, ya know the kind that used to be Y.M.C.A. or some foolishness like that.

That’s about it for the year in review.

Next year, we will add “updated the kitchen” to the list of acomplishments.

Speaking of updating our kitchen………I think I have some Ikea cabinets to exchange right about now.

So, a few months ago in a junk shop I found a small flock of 6 of these clip-on mercury birds with spun glass tails. I was smitten instantly, they all still had their tails and a clip on a spring….but just couldn’t put my finger on what was missing with them….

Once I mixed them in with the thousands of ornaments I already have …it hit me. The matte paint was a little lacking . They didn’t have any “sparkle”.

No worries…..that is a quick fix.

Lucky for me, and the rest of humanity, Martha makes a line of superfine glitter….AND, wait for it, clear craft glue with a superfine tip. Now I can “draw” the glue on the wings and head. I didn’t want them to look too new…so I tried to only accent the original red and blue paints with coordinating glitter ( Garnet and Lapis ) ….and not completely hide them .

So….craft glue + glitter + time =

Way , More, Much , Better……. ( and they still look weathered and aged )

Last year after Christmas we picked up a several boxes of bead garland at Restoration Hardware, by far one of my favorite stores, but pretty far from my everyday shopping price range ( that would be Target ) . So trust me , I think they were about 75% off of retail.

I love the perfectly aged look they have , but each string has only one color and one shape. Pretty Boring. Since we got several sizes and shapes…and a couple different colors……we decided to restring them in mixed patterns.

So we cut them up, one bowl per bead, and restrung them on 28 gauge wire ….into 6 foot strands.

When my brothers and I were growing up, our neighbors across the street from us had an 80’s style modern house that was so grand it was used as the back drop for a car commercial. They had a projection TV, a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, and little wipers on the headlights of the family car. They took lavish family vacations to Hawaii and Vail. They held an annual Christmas party with professional entertainment. Every year, just before the party, these neighbors had a 12 foot Noble pine delivered and professionally decorated. As I look back, with 30 years between me and the actual tree, I’m blown away at the grandness of it. I remember that it took 5 men to carry it in the door and stand it up straight….and at least a day for the team to wind all the twinkly white lights tightly on the perfect branches….that smelled of minty fresh pine. It was just breath-taking, all gold and crystal sparkle, with every ornament professionally placed in just the right spot. But at the time, I felt sorry for them, there was So much empty space between the branches ……

My parents bought our family tree at Sears in the late 60’s. By the time I was 14, it was the color of very old cabbage and smelled like dust. It had bristly bottle-brush branches that poked under my fingernails when I tried to assemble it. The lights we just draped around like popcorn (with no particular color order) some pink, some red, some multi colored with tiny plastic reflectors, and some were injected into the plastic forms of severed Santa and reindeer heads. We wound colored tinsel garland around the ends of every branch until the entire tree was a 7 foot cone of mismatched foil sparkle. Our ornaments were far from a theme…more of an anti-theme. There were styrofoam clowns and circus animals that my mother bought at a “fancy” store when she was a newly wed, plastic sugared candy baskets that were almost too heavy for the branches, pipe cleaner limbed elves with the paint chipping off their faces, and of course all the “odd ball” things kids make to put on the family Christmas tree….(out of popsicle sticks, egg cartons, glitter and play-dough). After an entire evening of cramming the poor little tree there wasn’t a single empty spot of cabbagy green poking through the clutter…

…and I thought it was just Glorious.

And so the dice were cast…..

There are probably enough ornaments for a tree twice as tall….

On Thanksgiving night , I pull the mummy of a tree out of the garage for a through fluffing and to make sure the lights all work. She always goes in a galvanized wash tub.

Just like the bushes outside our house, the tree has 3 kinds of lights too …..white B-lights, red pearls that look like berries, and C-7’s that end in a bubble light on the tip of every branch. It’s harder and harder to find the bubblers now…I found a few sets on Ebay this past year..so I’ve got enough for replacements for the next couple of years.

I hang vintage spinners over the big lights to make them spin from all the heat. Inside the tree, I snap UFO shaped light covers on the interior lights, and hang the bigger ornaments that would dominate the outside branches. I string on garlands until she is dripping with them like an old dowager….

The glass ornaments I’ve been collecting for about 20 years now, They are Polish, German, Czech and Italian. They take a long time to place…even though they pretty much end up over lapping in the end (of course)…. I have about 6 tubs of glass ornaments, each individually wrapped in bubble, throughout the year. We have been keeping them in the master bathroom shower, because it is climate controlled …and we currently don’t use it (honestly, I don’t think either of us could fit in it, but if fits 6 tubs of ornaments just fine ).

The final layer is a coating of tinsel icicles…I love the way they sparkle. Not really sure how long it takes to complete our tree…but I can tell you that while we were putting it together we watched 2 Bond films, Super 8, and White Christmas…and still weren’t finished.

And how do I know when it’s finished?……because there isn’t any space left between the branches.